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Rally Venture Partner and Former Google CIO Ben Fried will join Incept AI's Board of Directors.

NEW YORK, Feb. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- , the company bringing voice AI to the real world—starting with noisy restaurant drive-thru and phone orders—today announced a $3 million pre-seed round led by , with participation from . As part of the transaction, Ben Fried, a venture partner with Rally Ventures and the former CIO of Google, will join Incept AI's Board of Directors.

Since its emergence during the pandemic, voice AI order-taking has struggled to meet its potential for restaurant operators seeking to optimize labor productivity, provide compelling recommendations, and maintain peak efficiency throughout the day. Early solutions relied on Natural Language Understanding (NLU), which consistently failed to deliver high accuracy. As foundation models like OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, and High-Flyer's DeepSeek advanced, audio input emerged as the "last mile" challenge to surpass 97% accuracy— a milestone Incept AI has achieved since its May 2024 launch.

Incept AI brings voice AI to real-world environments through its pioneering audio neural networks that process noise, acoustic echo, and interfering speakers in challenging settings. Its proprietary Incept Neural Engine ensures accurate order-taking without relying on staff or call centers. Natively and seamlessly integrating with foundation models, menus, and POS systems, Incept AI helps restaurants stay nimble, increase profits, and deliver a consistently friendly guest experience.

"AI voice agents have handled restaurant orders for years, but no provider has achieved 97%+ accuracy without human intervention," said Umut Isik, Co-Founder and CEO of Incept AI. "This limits AI order-taking's scalability. Now is the right time for a new approach in this space, and we're excited to have the backing of Rally Ventures and 10VC."

"We see a massive opportunity in Incept AI's novel approach to solving voice AI's biggest challenge—accuracy and reliability in real-world environments," said Ben Fried, Venture Partner at Rally Ventures. "The team has a strong technical thesis and overall vision, and they've demonstrated impressive early traction."

Incept AI will use the funding to accelerate the development of its neural audio processing stack. The company will also broaden the rollout of its pilot deployments, which are currently in progress at multiple 1,000+ unit chains.

About Incept AI

Incept AI is bringing voice AI to the real world. Starting with noisy restaurant drive-thru and phone interactions, the company's Incept Neural Engine works seamlessly with leading foundation models like OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, and DeepSeek to help QSR, fast-casual, and pizza chains achieve agility, increase profits, and deliver a consistent, always-on guest experience. Learn more at or email [email protected].

About Rally Ventures

Rally Ventures invests exclusively in early-stage business technology companies, focusing on entrepreneurs creating major new markets or bringing transformative approaches to existing ones. Since 1997, Rally Ventures' partners and venture capital industry veterans have invested in or run early-stage enterprise business-to-business technology companies with a proven ability to deliver superior returns regardless of the overall market environment. For more information visit .

About 10VC

10VC invests in brilliant founders building transformational platform technologies. The fund focuses on B2B pre-seed startups from the USA, Canada and the EU. For more information visit .

Media Contact

Media Relations, Incept AI, 1 2535091466, [email protected],

SOURCE Incept AI